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By Root 1139 0

mapping necessarily had to triumph over figurative mapping, however artful. In Paris the apostle of the former was a Burgundian architect named Edme Verniquet, who, having purchased the venal office of road surveyor, discovered that none of the available maps was accurate enough to allow him to align buildings. He devoted half his adult life to devising such a mathematically exact plan. From 1783 until the royal purse grew too empty in 1788, Verniquet enjoyed Louis XVI’s patronage in paying the sixty surveyors and two hundred helpers who charted the city at night by torchlight to avoid disrupting traffic. The project captured the imagination of le tout-Paris, who flocked to gape at the draftsmen laboring in the gallery of the Couvent des Cordeliers on a seventy-two-sheet map that, assembled, measures 16½ by 13 feet. The Plan Verniquet captures the last portrait of the Paris of the ancien régime before so many of its convents and churches were demolished and Napoléon’s gloire was imprinted on the urban fabric.

Verniquet was a hard act to follow. His plan was the basis of almost all Paris maps in the first half of the nineteenth century until Baron Georges Haussmann commissioned a new survey in 1853. But that is not to say that nineteenth-century maps are not fascinating and charming. Engineer Aristide-Michel Perrot’s 1834 Petit Atlas Pittoresque des Quarante-Huit Quartiers de la Ville de Paris offers alongside its maps delectable aperçus of the life of the city; the map of the twelfth arrondissement, the Quartier du Jardin du Roi, which became the Jardin des Plantes, is accompanied by an illustration of its caged giraffe, which drew all Paris in wonderment.

Haussmann definitively established the Office of the Plan de Paris in 1853, appointing Deschamps to head it. The maps he and his colleagues produced were accurate and full of purpose, if perhaps less romantic than their predecessors. Literacy and cheap, colorful reproduction spread maps far and wide—but did not devalue them; as the Plan de Munster indicates, maps, regardless of design, production technique, or purpose, are “Portraits of the City.”

Those bitten by the historical-map bug should repair to the Chalcographie, handsomely installed under the Louvre’s pyramid, for restrikes or to the Bibliothèque Nationale’s smart boutique at 6 rue des Petits-Champs, 2ème, for reduced-size facsimiles. Those seeking period maps might address themselves to one or another of the specialist map dealers, firms like Louis Loeb-Larocque, at 31 rue de Tolbiac, 13ème, or Sartoni-Cerveau, at 15 quai Saint-Michel, 5ème—both streets of which they can locate in their Paris par Arrondissement.

Il connaît Paris comme sa poche (he knows Paris like the back of his hand or, literally, like his pocket) is high praise indeed. Those who merit such praise will have often whipped a map from pocket or pocketbook to find their way.

Why I Love My Quincaillerie

BARBARA WILDE

THIS IS ANOTHER Paris Postcard that Barbara Wilde shared on her great Web site, L’Atelier Vert, introduced previously (on this page). I, too, love the French quincaillerie, and I’ll repeat how I also love Wilde’s postcard missives. Each one is unique, containing some wonderfully written passages. Here’s a superb one from one of her earliest postcards, “What Am I Doing Here?”: “I love to think that after I am gone, Paris will remain the same, imperceptibly absorbing the drop of my life into the river of humanity that has flowed through it for so long. The permanence of Paris comforts me.”

“VOUS désirez, madame?” I felt like rubbing my eyes. I had just walked through the door of my local hardware store, and this most professional of shopkeeper greetings had just been uttered by a pixieish nine-year-old in long braids. She regarded me through the lenses of her glasses with every bit as much aplomb as the sixty-something matron who usually minded the store. Her serious demeanor bespoke the gravity and importance of the interaction we were about to embark upon, while her courteous phrasing implied the profound respect